Donald Trump’s latest document dump of declassified FBI communications tries to contort long-established facts about the Russia investigation into a smoking gun of a criminal conspiracy.
During a Substack Live conversation, Allison Gill and I discussed why that effort thrives on spinning and obscuring the historical record.
All Rise News explained the background of this development in Wednesday’s newsletter, which is republished below.
‘Wittingly or unwittingly’
Throughout Trump’s second term, a pattern has emerged.
The White House or its allies release a stash of once-sensitive or declassified documents, claiming that the files support popular MAGA conspiracy theories, damage one of Trump’s enemies, or both. Then, upon scrutiny, the documents reveal information damaging to Trump and his conspiracy theories.
Disgraced journalist John Solomon, a figure from Trump’s first impeachment who is now serving on a White House task force, gave a prime example of the practice on Wednesday. He released declassified documents revealing that the FBI feared Trump had been “wittingly or unwittingly” manipulated by the Russian government.
The FBI investigation described in the documents has a quirky code name: “Oxferd comma,” intentionally misspelled for undisclosed reasons.
Dated one day before Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, the declassified FBI memo found “an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.”
“The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and /or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and / or a violation of federal criminal statutes,” the memo continues. “In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump and others yet to be named obstructed and /or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”
Mueller ultimately did not find enough evidence to charge Trump with a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government, but his findings fell far short of Trump’s claim of “COMPLETE AND TOTAL EXONERATION.”
“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” the Mueller report found.
Mueller found that the Trump campaign “welcomed” the Kremlin’s election interference, charged 34 people and three companies in connection with his investigation, and convicted eight of them. The report showed that Trump’s campaign shared internal polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the GOP-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee described as a Russian asset.
The former special counsel also found that Trump may have obstructed justice at least 10 times, but he declined to reach a traditional prosecutorial judgment because he couldn’t indict a then-sitting president. The FBI memo cited Trump’s firing of James Comey as one of those possible instances of obstruction which prevented prosecutors from getting a “complete picture” from the investigation.
“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the report concluded.
Even though the FBI’s memos were consistent with Mueller’s findings and evidence, Solomon suggested that the declassified memos could support an ongoing “grand conspiracy” investigation into Trump’s enemies.
You can read the memo in full here.
